You might have noticed a little redecorating around my books if you’ve read any of them in the past. A little while back, my contract with Carina Press — the Harlequin imprint that published Cloaked in Danger, the second book in my Willoughby Family series, came up. It’s been seven years since that book was published in 2014 (where did that time go?) and it was time for me to consider my options.
It seems so odd to think that… consider my options. I mean, it’s Harlequin. It’s the end all, be all of romance book publishing, right? My book was parked at Carina Press, the digital-first (and only, mostly) imprint — and if you’ve visited that website lately, there wasn’t a whole lot of historical romance to be found.
Did I want to keep it there? Take it back? What did I want to do with this series? I published three books in the series:
- Something about Her — originally with Wild Rose Press, then self-published
- Cloaked In Danger —originally with Carina Press
- A Rogue’s Deadly Redemption — the third, self-published on my own
And I knew there was another story I wanted to tell. Cordelia’s story.
My books have had a few homes along the way, but I knew that going forward, I wanted to be able to bundle them together more: connected covers, bring Cloaked in Danger to print like the other two — and if I wanted to write Cordelia’s story, I needed the series as a whole to make this work — and eventually to introduce the books to a new crop of readers.
So I decided it was time to request the rights back. It was in the contract, it was pretty straightforward with Harlequin—and I knew they weren’t going to do anything more with that one single book on their end.
So… the Willoughby Family series is now all together. And it was time to give them a refreshed set of covers. I’d love to know what you think of them!
And Cordelia’s story? Well, yes, that will come… but that’s a post for another day.